


Backwater Blues

by Spice



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Arthur Morgan Lives, Canon compliant up until the epilogue, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, More tags to be added, Pining, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 09:35:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spice/pseuds/Spice
Summary: Arthur was meant to fade away, become a distant memory, or become nothing at all, lost to the cruel hands of time. It had taken him years to come to terms with the loneliness Charles had granted him; a guarded wall around his feelings that shattered the second he laid eyes on John Marston’s face.(In which Arthur Morgan struggles with the burdens of living, and John Marston struggles with the burdens of love.)





	Backwater Blues

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in a while, so forgive me if I'm rusty!
> 
> Title is from the song of the same name performed by Bessie Smith.

_Steady._

There was a constant fog that seemed to envelop the woods of northern New Hanover. It had been like that at Beaver Hollow, and it was like that still, obscuring John’s vision in ways that made him jumpy and uncomfortable. Ghosts at dawn, wisping through clouds in the distance and playing tricks on his eyes as he stared down the sight of his rifle. Just his luck, it would be so damn thick today.

He spat on the ground beside him, taking care not to peel his eyes too far away from his mark. The moisture felt frigid on his lips, and he licked them, again, feeling the chapped skin drag across the bottom of his tongue, tasted blood. The cold always did a bad number on him. He liked the heat of the south, moisture clinging to his skin and a searing sun reminding him that he was still alive, not some shambling corpse wandering through the woods, icy and alone. “Don’t you dare move, you bastard…” He murmured, half to himself and half to the distant hulking form at the water’s edge. Three hundred yards ahead, just a little to the left, he thought. _Lift your sight - yeah. Right there._

Lord above, he just wanted this disaster of a trip to be at its end. Pack up his tent and call it a day, head back to town and rent himself a nice room with a hot bath and a decent meal, for all it was worth. Temporary relief from all this nothing. All this goddamn waiting.

His finger pressed down on the trigger, gently, slowly. He’d been tracking this bull moose for two days, its pelt a bright white and blending into the misty morning. Another ghost, perhaps. But a ghost that would earn him enough to last the month, if sold to the right man. Living off pennies. He’d done it before, but it had been a long time since he’d ever felt so isolated in his burdens.

 _Crack_.

The gunshot echoed through the trees, sending birds scattering for a mile around and making John’s ears ring. The moose bellowed, stumbled, and lay where it fell, blood blossoming red against coarse fur and spilling onto the soil below. Where had he seen something like this before?

 _Ah, Colter_. With his own blood oozing into the snow, red against white and nothing else in between except the howling of wolves and the stink of fear. Low moans of pain erupted from the moose. It was still alive, then. John slung his rifle onto his back and unholstered his revolver, clinging to the cold metal like a child might cling to a blanket in the dark. The only safety left, when all else had abandoned him. Happiness, comfort, family. They were all so fleeting, just like life.

The moose kicked its legs weakly, one final struggle before darkness ferried it away for the last time. Its breath heaved, being devoured by the fog like everything else in this God forsaken place, and as John approached he could see the fire in its eyes, still raging as mind, body, and spirit slipped away. He raised his gun to its head, and fired.

 

* * *

 

“Hold still, you damn fool…”

Theo Marshall was his name, according to the supervisor. A fine name, if there ever was one, for a young and tragic interloper who could hardly tell the wind from a whistle. Arthur wrestled with the young man’s leg, a crippled, broken thing, splintered at an awkward angle and looking none too pretty under the faint light of the mine’s electric lamps. Marshall shrieked and hiccuped in a way that may indeed have been a sob, wrenching his sorry calf from Arthur’s grip.

Or at least attempted to, with minimal success.

“Will someone _please_ hold this man down?” Arthur bellowed, and one or two of the onlooking men obliged, at last giving Arthur a moment’s respite to get his wits about him. “And god damn it,” he murmured, trailing hands across the wound, kneading the bone and its place, or lack thereof. “Get this man a fucking drink.”

A snap, and a scream, and the break was set. Arthur worked quickly then, cutting strips of cloth from the man’s jeans, crafting a splint and a tourniquet from the scraps of broken wood that lay scattered across the cart tracks. “Someone’s gotta get him to Saint Denis. That don’t look too good,” he said, ignoring the excruciating moans that drifted through the narrow corridors, muffled by dirt and rock and thick, musty air. “Jameson’s a right son of a bitch, refusing to hire a proper doctor for this pit. How many men we lost this month?”

“Three, Mr. Callahan,” one of the young men latched onto the unlucky bastard’s thigh eagerly replied. He was a German boy, no older than twenty-five, with a worried face and hands that bore the scars of a lifetime spent breaking rocks beneath the earth.

“Well, shit.” Arthur heaved a heavy sigh, wiping beads of sweat from his brow on the back of his shirt sleeve. Something about being this deep - he expected it to be colder than it was. Instead, it trapped the heat of a hundred working men, making the place uncomfortably humid and nigh unbearable to breathe.

“Woulda lost more, if it weren’t for you, sir. Young Marshall’s got a chance now.”

“Won’t do him much good if he ain’t got the brains to stay away from the shafts.” A final tug, and the young man’s leg finally went limp in his hands. Arthur glanced at his face. Marshall’s eyes were closed, darting back and forth beneath his eyelids as if he were trapped in a nightmare, but he was still breathing steadily. Must have passed out from the pain. “S’pose you’re right, though. He’ll be fine in a month or two. Seen men survive worse things than this.”

“I sure hope you’re right, Mr. Callahan.”

The young German lad, like the rest of them, was covered in the fruits of a hard day’s labor: dirt, grime, and coal. Arthur hardly knew him. Hardly knew anyone in this place, but he’d always had a pleasant enough demeanor. Always been willing to lend a hand. It was own kind of foolishness, Arthur thought. All that optimism made a man easy to take advantage of. In another life, perhaps, Arthur might have been the one pointing a gun to his head, demanding his life’s earnings in exchange for a bullet through the eye.

A man with a cart came and ferried Marshall away, leaving Arthur to stare down at his empty palms. His hands were dark, slick with the red of a stranger’s blood and the black of coal and gunpowder. It had been a while since he’d seen his skin like this, marred by violence and mistakes, and trembling slightly. “Hey, kid, you got a wife?”

“Yes sir, I do. How come?” The man was pulled out of some kind of reverie, staring up at the dim light of day that now shone through the roof of the mine.

“You take care of her, you hear? Too many widows in this place.”

 

* * *

 

Arthur always found himself wandering to Edith Downes’ doorstep. The place was more decrepit now than it was when her and her hot-blooded son were eking out a meager living there, with paint flaking off the walls and rot setting into the wood beneath. It was always raining in Annesburg, dooming most man-made things to rust or decay. He would lean against the wall, the steep slope of the roof angled just enough to keep most of the water from soaking through his clothes, and smoke, taking long drags of cheap cigarettes as his mind sifted through thoughts of nothing in particular. Just an empty, ugly house, giving solace to an empty, ugly man. Two of a kind, they were. Miserable wretches, the lot of them.

The silence always reminded him of something Reverend Swanson had said many years ago, back when things were decent and Swanson was sometimes sober and Arthur didn’t much have the energy to question his lot in life. “ _For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know nothing more; neither have they a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten._ ”

Depressing piece of scripture, that.

He knew his death alone could never have atoned for the things he’d done, as much as the spiteful Mrs. Downes might have wished it upon him. Arthur wasn’t sure he believed in Heaven, Hell, and the like, but he’d begun to grow fond of the idea, burning in Hell for an eternity as penance for his sins. Robbing, cheating, killing: the list went on and on. It was a sick sort of irony, realizing he’d been robbed of death in the end. But life weren’t fair, and neither was death.

Arthur never found out what that verse meant. The scripture had never interested him, evoking distant memories of a father who twisted the words of the Bible to suit his cruelty and abuse. But being forgotten, well… there was peace in that. When he saw Edith Downes at her lowest, broken and in pain because of his foolishness, he’d thought being forgotten would be best. When he’d said his goodbyes at the mountaintop and sent John away to start a new life with his family, the very same thought remained.

Instead, he’d woken up a week later, delirious with fever and ravenous hunger in the back of a traveling wagon, Charles at his side.

“ _You’re lucky, old man,_ ” Charles had said. _“Dragged your sorry ass off the mountain and ran into a doctor, says he knows you. We’re taking you somewhere safe, Arthur. It’s going to be okay._ ”

And just like that, his dream of Hell was gone.

Arthur despised every minute of his recovery: Dr. Renaud poking needles full of strange solutions into his skin, his lungs burning with such agonizing intensity that dying would be preferable. His year at the sanatorium in New York had been far worse, with his days spent under the watchful eye of strangers who felt the need to dictate where he sat, what he ate, when he took a shit. They hadn’t given him long, but somehow, despite his best efforts to the contrary, Arthur pulled through. When it seemed his strength had returned for good, he put pen to paper and wrote a letter to Charles up north. It had been sloppy, and desperate, and smeared with a tear or two that Arthur was surprised had been able to come from a man as numb as he was at all.

 

 _Charles,_ It read,

_It appears that I have made it, though this will certainly cause nothing but grief to all those who I have left behind. Please place my grave where the Pinkertons might find it, and let me disappear._

_John and the others need not know. As Dutch still lives and breathes, they are at far too great a risk already. I only apologize for placing this burden on your shoulders as well._

_Your Friend, Eternally Grateful,_

_AM_

 

Annesburg wasn’t remote by any means, but he was surrounded by sorry men and women with solemn faces, who hardly lifted their eyes from the ground as they went about their daily woes. It suited him, fading away into nothingness here. As close to forgotten as a living man could be. And that aside, part of him had become bound to this place when he confessed his remorse to Edith, sat for hours on the distant hillside, waited until she and her son finally emerged from their sorry little house with bags hastily packed and boarded the next train out of town. Dying had made him sentimental. More so than he had ever been.

A horse whinnied in the distance, and Arthur blew out a long breath, watching smoke and the moisture from his lungs tangle together in a twisted web that spiraled through the frigid air, curling into the late afternoon sky. He was alive, and breathing. And he supposed that would just have to be that, for now.

“Alright, old man,” he murmured to himself, tamping out the cigarette beneath his boot and watching the embers scatter to the wind. “Time to go.” A final tap against the side of the Downes’ home and he was free from his reverie.

Across the tracks, the sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows that framed the muddy ground with tendrils of icy white light through the clouds. It wasn’t pretty, like it ought to have been. Like it _would_ have been, if Arthur were out riding the endless expanse of trails that wound through the countryside, as was his nature. Instead, it only served to paint over the ugliest parts of civilization. A gilded cage, is what it was. All the luxuries of the modern world with all the damn misery that accompanied it.

Sing-song voices drifted from the bar, mimicking the pounding of the piano keys with unwarranted drunken bravado. Undoubtedly a bunch of sorry sons of bitches celebrating making it through the day with all their limbs intact, which was quite a feat under Jameson’s employ. The lights inside looked warm and inviting, and the sturdy horse hitched to the post outside the door suggested some traveler or another had felt the same.

Arthur wrestled with himself, for a moment. Drink was a pleasure cure, but it was one that made him sloppy. Oh... hadn’t Hosea always kindly chastised him for his unruly behavior after a bottle or two of whiskey? The urgency that escaped him during the day always erupted from him tenfold when dusk settled in and he held a flask in his hand. That unbridled emotion - he wasn’t good with it. Lenny had seen as much, and laughed at him for it, back before he took a bullet to the gut and couldn’t laugh no more. Karen too, until the drink consumed her and the alcohol in her veins flowed thicker than blood and she no longer had the right of it.

Melancholy was a constant state of being for him now as he ambled through the motions of everyday life, always dwelling on the memories of his companions both fallen and left behind. For years, their smiling faces had haunted him. At the lake in New York, he would sit and stare at the water for hours, watching visions of them dance across the ripples, silent and beautiful, until the doctor called him inside and they returned to him in his dreams. Would sketch them from memory in his new journal, and felt a silent, hopeless despair when he realized he was no longer certain whether or not Hosea’s eyes had been hazel, or if John really had small freckles dusting the apples of his cheeks. He drank sometimes, not to forget, but to remember. To cling to the few memories he had left, and feel just a little of the joy he’d had back in the glory days of the Van der Linde gang. It called to him, that familiar and friendly light. The boisterous laughter. Once more couldn’t hurt. Once more could only make it better.

Oh, what a sorry fool he was.

The din from the bar grew unexpectedly loud as a figure burst through the door, all stumbles and no grace as he teetered towards the hitched horse and slung his arm around its neck. Arthur saw many travelers pass through this town, recognizable by the jaunt in their step and the overall passion for life that was absent from many a man and woman whose reality lie decaying in the toxic smoke of Annesburg. There was something different about this stranger, however. Arthur could not see his face, but he could see that the man was guarded, tense and on edge despite his drunken swagger. His coat was thick and frayed and hung loose on his frame, with pockets that might have been simple to pick had Arthur a deft enough hand and a desire to slip back into old habits. He caught a passing glimpse of unruly hair, trapped beneath a worn cap and a pulled up collar. In fact, everything about this man was rough and dirty, from the dried blood on his fingertips to the mud splattered up to the back of his knees.

A stranger to Annesburg, but no stranger to misery.

Arthur’s eyes picked apart the rifle slung across the man’s shoulders. Single shot, with a scope so tarnished it was a wonder anyone could see through it at all. It was hardly the weapon of choice for a gun for hire, and even less so for a lawman or a bounty hunter. But despite it all, Arthur felt a deep sense of unease. It didn’t matter that he noticed the sorry way the man was attempting to keep his knees from collapsing beneath him as he clung to the saddle. It was as if he was gazing into a mirror, peering back at a darker time and all the things he'd been capable of destroying.

A half-hearted and husky “Evenin’, mister,” and Arthur made to be on his way.

But the man went rigid, as if becoming acutely aware in such a way that a drunk man should not be, and Arthur’s unease grew into something feverish.

There was a tentative moment where he could do nothing but flex his fingers at his side, hovering over the phantom of a holster that had been present like a searing wound in a former life. He kept nothing but his hunting knife there now, leaving him defenseless, but also remarkably less likely to shed unnecessary blood. He’d been thinking something worrisome, as of late; if he were to die for lack of a gun, he wouldn’t mind that so much anymore.

The man’s head turned to face him, agonizingly slow, dragging out the silence into a long and paranoid crescendo, and Arthur noticed his thick beard, unkempt and haggard like the rest of the man’s wild appearance. Felt the eyes boring into his face, though they were hidden from view. Tanned skin begot the hard lines of his cheeks, face powdered with dirt all the way to where the shadow from his cap began to obscure his angled features. There was something… a feeling, deep in Arthur’s chest, that boiled to the surface as he warily eyed the taut line of the man’s lips, but he had no time to dwell. With all the fury of a coiled snake, the man lunged at him, snarling something fierce.

Arthur wasn’t sure why he hesitated. Perhaps it was the familiar way the man’s teeth clenched into a savage grimace, tugging on some invisible heartstring that birthed a maelstrom within him before his brain could catch up to his eyes. Or maybe it was the pitch in his voice, agonized and mournful like the howl of a wolf that had lost its litter. Whatever it was, it left Arthur stunned, and he was swiftly knocked to the ground by the collision of lithe muscle and flailing limbs.

“You goddamn son of a _bitch_ !” The voice rang clearly into the quickly darkening sky, and Arthur could not see the handful of eyes in the street that had suddenly turned their way, watching the spectacle unfold. He could, however, see the man’s eyes, chocolate brown and burning with savage intent. Saw the scars that marred his cheek, unmistakable after all the nights Arthur had spent tending to them when they were fresh to be certain they wouldn’t fester. Saw the _fist_ just before it cracked heavily against his jaw.

Arthur’s head snapped back, slamming into the mud and dirt with a force that made his skull pound and his vision blur. Instinct drove him to raise his arms just before John could strike him again, wrestling with shirt sleeves and the fury that bled from him as he struggled restlessly. “John, _John, listen to me,_ settle down,” he murmured in the calmest voice he could muster, though it only seemed to make things worse.

“No, _fuck you_ ! You-” John’s chest was heaving, some indescribable emotion twisting his features into a monstrous grimace as he wrenched his arm free from Arthur’s grip. His fist flew to the breast of Arthur’s coat, clenching fabric, knuckles white against the dark leather as he yanked him so rough Arthur thought they might topple backwards. “You’re alive? All these _goddamn_ years, Arthur. Charles _buried_ you. _I stood by your fucking grave_ . You expect me to to just _settle down?_ Are you that fuckin’ dense?”

Arthur could smell the whiskey on John’s breath. It seeped out of him through his voice, icy and cruel, and made his words sting like a thousand little knives, making slow and calculated cuts across his heart. Arthur imagined himself beside the campfire all those years ago, watching John whittle away at sticks for hours, never making anything of worth. Just chipping away at the world, making sense of where it all went wrong, confusion and disdain in his eyes after examining his life and finding it wanting.

It was the same look in his eyes now, though it belied a terrible reverence that Arthur found difficult to accept. Little Johnny Marston, always looking up to a broken man.

How far they’d fallen.

“Where the hell were you?” John continued, and his words grew heavy and distant and hollow. “All those years I needed you, and _where the hell were you?_ ”

The silence returned, and Arthur could do nothing but stare at the pain burgeoning between them. This man, his brother in arms… He’d been determined to believe that all his choices had been for the best, that severing all ties gave John the best chance at a new life with his wife and child. They were never, _ever_ supposed to meet again. Arthur was meant to fade away, become a distant memory, or become nothing at all, lost to the cruel hands of time. It had taken him years to come to terms with the loneliness Charles had granted him; a guarded wall around his feelings that shattered the second he laid eyes on John Marston’s face.

His time in the shadows was over. Ruined. He knew John. Knew that he was not the type of man who could ever turn a blind eye to a man’s faults.

Arthur had many of those.

Resentment was too much a part of who John was, and spite alone would keep him in Arthur’s life until the end of his days. He knew this too, but he deigned to hope John would run from him now and never look back. Was desperate for it.

“You gonna fucking say something?” John spat, eyes wild and searching for answers that Arthur wasn’t sure how to give.

It was then that Arthur reached up. Hesitantly, at first, because he could feel the eyes of onlookers and hear the jeers other half-drunk men furious that the fight had come to a halt. But he could hardly help himself, could he? It had been so long since he’d seen John’s face, so familiar and full of memories both warm and disgustingly vile. He let his hand linger against the scars on his cheek, burning the feel of them onto his fingertips like the hot iron of a cattle brand. John’s skin was warm, and Arthur thought of mild spring days spent laying in the meadows out west. Thought of simpler times.

“I’m sorry, John,” he whispered, and watched as his old friend’s eyes grew wide. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I-”

John stumbled as he stood, released his grip on Arthur’s coat and let him plummet back to solid ground. One, two, three paces away now, looking suddenly pale, as if he were about to vomit; tripping over his own feet, the lucidity of the moment now lost in a drunken haze.

Arthur felt the mud seep through his clothes, soaking him through to the bone as a sudden chill overtook him. It was all he could do to lay where he’d fallen, his eyes glued to the clouds, staring up at the rain as it cascaded down around him, filling the space in the sky, making the world feel so very small.

A voice came from John’s lips, much smaller than before. “Where were you?”

“Here.”

“Why?”

“Was scared, I s’pose.” Arthur rose to his elbows, then his hips, cursing his aging body for protesting the strain of it all. John could certainly still pack a punch. “This ain’t the place to talk about it.”

A moment passed, and then another, and onlookers began to disperse as they realized the worst of the storm had passed. John said nothing for a long while, and Arthur let the silence mull around them, watching the shape of John’s back as he fidgeted something fierce beside him. He looked thinner than Arthur remembered, and perhaps a bit older, though still hearty and strong and full of youthful vigor. Arthur wondered at the coincidence of it all, wondered if maybe Charles had sent him here to find him after so many years, though he hadn’t the heart to ask when John was so clearly avoiding his gaze.

Finally, John found his voice. “You happy here?”

“Not really,” Arthur replied, and it was the truth, as honest as he could give it.

“I’ve got a place,” John began slowly, as if carefully measuring his words. “A ranch down by Blackwater. We could talk there. You could visit.”

“ _Blackwater?_ ” Arthur couldn’t hide the hint of ire in his voice, a bark of a laugh suddenly escaping his lips as he hoisted himself to his feet. “After all this time, I thought maybe you’da found some brains up in that empty skull of yours, but once again, Marston, you have proved me wrong. You lookin’ to get yourself hanged?”

Again, the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, _shut the hell up_ , Arthur. It’s been eight fuckin’ years. World’s been changing, even without you butting your nose into every goddamn thing I do.” John’s tone was bitter again, virulent in his anger. If Arthur had wounded his pride, he wore it well, baring it in the way he harshly threaded his fingers through his hair beneath his cap, glaring daggers at the ground. “Our bounties ain’t been up for years. County ain’t got the money for it no more.”

“We was wanted dead or alive, John.”

“And I’m tellin’ you we _ain’t_ anymore,” John hissed. “The world’s moved on.”

Arthur dragged a hand across his chin and scowled, feeling tender flesh beneath the mark of John’s fist. It would almost certainly be black and blue by the end of the night, an aching reminder of their chance meeting.This was all some hellish joke. It must have been, because even his wildest nightmares couldn’t have dreamt up something so profoundly miserable. “Listen to me, John,” he rumbled low, grasping the younger man by the arm and pulling him level with his lips so he could keep his voice out of the way of prying ears. “I’ve got a mighty high bounty on my head. Enough money for a man to live off of for the rest of his God forsaken life if he decides to turn me in. So don’t tell me about movin’ on, because ain’t nobody ever _moved on_ from a price like that.”

“Arthur…”

“I was gettin’ you _out_. That was meant to be the last damn thing I ever did. You and your family ain’t never gonna live a life of peace if I’m there mucking it all up, so it’s best you go now, you hear? Forget you ever saw me.”

“ _Arthur._ ”

John was trembling beneath his touch now, and whether it was from anger or the biting cold, Arthur wasn’t sure. Something wet dusted the other man’s cheek, tracking lines through the dirt on his skin, and Arthur thought it was rain until the moment John pressed his palms against his eyes, tilted his head back, and drew a shaky breath. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere unless you’re coming with me. You can’t make me do that again.”

Arthur opened his mouth to argue. Closed it again. Drifted in and out of scattered thoughts, trying to piece together the things he needed to say to put an end to all this, but they eluded him. The conviction in John’s voice had struck him dumb, leaving him empty and without words.

John had only cried like this once, when he was just a boy of thirteen still struggling with the fear of a noose around his scrawny neck. He’d done something grievous earlier that week, harmless and petty and not worth remembering now, but it had left Arthur in a bitter mood nonetheless. Arthur knew he could be cruel. He’d always used silence and biting words as a weapon against even the best of men, and John was no exception, receiving the blunt end of a cold shoulder that lasted for days until the boy had approached him with tears in his eyes and graced him with a cuff upside the head.

 _“I know you’ve got somethin’ to say to me,”_ he’d sniveled. _“So how about you stop being a piece of shit and get on with it?”_

Things didn’t look all that different now.

Agony was all that was left, after it was all said and done. Agony at the thought of putting John in danger now. Agony at the thought of leaving him behind. Arthur felt torn in all directions at once, being drawn and quartered with the weight of his indecision and the judgement of the man beside him. He pressed his eyes shut and inhaled, long, and deep, and lost. Gave John’s arm a final reassuring squeeze and nodded, despite it all.

“Alright John, anything for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies if updates are slow going forward! I'm at the start of a new semester and a new job, so I may end up getting bogged down, but I hope to be able to post a new chapter soon. Next chapter will be from John's POV and should be a lot thirstier than this one was, so pray for me here y'all I'm dyin'
> 
> Tossed around a couple ideas to try and make Arthur's survival believable. First, I vaguely called back to Alphonse Renaud, the doctor that Arthur helps in Rhodes during "No Good Deed." I also threw in a bit of a sanatorium stay, which I figured Arthur would hate more than anything, but if it keeps him alive then he'll just have to deal ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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